The Physics book: from the big bang to quantum resurrection, 250 milestones in the history of physics

Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Introduction
Acknowledgments
SETTING THE STAGE
	13.7 Billion B.C. Big Bang
	3 Billion B.C. Black Diamonds
	2 Billion B.C. Prehistoric Nuclear Reactor
THE DISCOVERIES
	30,000 B.C. Atlatl
	20,000 B.C. Boomerang
	3000 B.C. Sundial
	2500 B.C. Truss
	1850 B.C. Arch
	1000 B.C. Olmec Compass
	341 B.C. Crossbow
	250 B.C. Baghdad Battery
	250 B.C. Siphon
	250 B.C. Archimedes’ Principle of Buoyancy
	250 B.C. Archimedean Screw
	240 B.C. Eratosthenes Measures the Earth
	230 B.C. Pulley
	212 B.C. Archimedes’ Burning Mirrors
	125 B.C. Antikythera Mechanism
	50 Hero’s Jet Engine
	50 Gears
	78 St. Elmo’s Fire
	1132 Cannon
	1150 Perpetual Motion Machines
	1200 Trebuchet
	1304 Explaining the Rainbow
	1338 Hourglass
	1543 Sun-Centered Universe
	1596 Mysterium Cosmographicum
	1600 De Magnete
	1608 Telescope
	1609 Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion
	1610 Discovery of Saturn’s Rings
	1611 Kepler’s “Six-Cornered Snowfake”
	1620 Triboluminescence
	1621 Snell’s Law of Refraction
	1621 Aurora Borealis
	1638 Acceleration of Falling Objects
	1643 Barometer
	1644 Conservation of Momentum
	1660 Hooke’s Law of Elasticity
	1660 Von Guericke’s Electrostatic Generator
	1662 Boyle’s Gas Law
	1665 Micrographia
	1669 Amontons’ Friction
	1672 Measuring the Solar System
	1672 Newton’s Prism
	1673 Tautochrone Ramp
	1687 Newton’s Laws of Motion and Gravitation
	1687 Newton as Inspiration
	1711 Tuning Fork
	1728 Escape Velocity
	1738 Bernoulli’s Law of Fluid Dynamics
	1744 Leyden Jar
	1752 Ben Franklin’s Kite
	1761 Black Drop Effect
	1766 Bode’s Law of Planetary Distances
	1777 Lichtenberg Figures
	1779 Black Eye Galaxy
	1783 Black Holes
	1785 Coulomb’s Law of Electrostatics
	1787 Charles’ Gas Law
	1796 Nebular Hypothesis
	1798 Cavendish Weighs the Earth
	1800 Battery
	1801 Wave Nature of Light
	1803 Henry’s Gas Law
	1807 Fourier Analysis
	1808 Atomic Theory
	1811 Avogadro’s Gas Law
	1814 Fraunhofer Lines
	1814 Laplace’s Demon
	1815 Brewster’s Optics
	1816 Stethoscope
	1822 Fourier’s Law of Heat Conduction
	1823 Olbers’ Paradox
	1824 Greenhouse Effect
	1824 Carnot Engine
	1825 Ampère’s Law of Electromagnetism
	1826 Rogue Waves
	1827 Ohm’s Law of Electricity
	1827 Brownian Motion
	1829 Graham’s Law of Effusion
	1831 Faraday’s Laws of Induction
	1834 Soliton
	1835 Gauss and the Magnetic Monopole
	1838 Stellar Parallax
	1839 Fuel Cell
	1840 Poiseuille’s Law of Fluid Flow
	1840 Joule’s Law of Electric Heating
	1841 Anniversary Clock
	1841 Fiber Optics
	1842 Doppler Effect
	1843 Conservation of Energy
	1844 I-Beams
	1845 Kirchhoff’s Circuit Laws
	1846 Discovery of Neptune
	1850 Second Law of Thermodynamics
	1850 Ice Slipperiness
	1851 Foucault’s Pendulum
	1851 Stokes’ Law of Viscosity
	1852 Gyroscope
	1852 Stokes’ Fluorescence
	1857 Buys-Ballot’s Weather Law
	1859 Kinetic Theory
	1861 Maxwell’s Equations
	1864 Electromagnetic Spectrum
	1866 Surface Tension
	1866 Dynamite
	1867 Maxwell’s Demon
	1868 Discovery of Helium
	1870 Baseball Curveball
	1871 Rayleigh Scattering
	1873 Crookes Radiometer
	1875 Boltzmann’s Entropy Equation
	1878 Incandescent Light Bulb
	1879 Plasma
	1879 Hall Effect
	1880 Piezoelectric Effect
	1880 War Tubas
	1882 Galvanometer
	1882 Green Flash
	1887 Michelson-Morley Experiment
	1889 Birth of the Kilogram
	1889 Birth of the Meter
	1890 Eötvös’ Gravitational Gradiometry
	1891 Tesla Coil
	1892 Thermos
	1895 X-rays
	1895 Curie’s Magnetism Law
	1896 Radioactivity
	1897 Electron
	1898 Mass Spectrometer
	1900 Blackbody Radiation Law
	1901 Clothoid Loop
	1903 Black Light
	1903 Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation
	1904 Lorentz Transformation
	1905 Special Theory of Relativity
	1905 E = mc2
	1905 Photoelectric Effect
	1905 Golf Ball Dimples
	1905 Third Law of Thermodynamics
	1906 Vacuum Tube
	1908 Geiger Counter
	1909 Bremsstrahlung
	1910 Cosmic Rays
	1911 Superconductivity
	1911 Atomic Nucleus
	1911 Kármán Vortex Street
	1911 Wilson Cloud Chamber
	1912 Cepheid Variab154les Measure the Universe
	1912 Bragg’s Law of Crystal Diffraction
	1913 Bohr Atom
	1913 Millikan Oil Drop Experiment
	1915 General Theory of Relativity
	1919 String Theory
	1921 Einstein as Inspiration
	1922 Stern-Gerlach Experiment
	1923 Neon Signs
	1923 Compton Effect
	1924 De Broglie Relation
	1925 Pauli Exclusion Principle
	1926 Schrödinger’s Wave Equation
	1927 Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
	1927 Complementarity Principle
	1927 Hypersonic Whipcracking
	1928 Dirac Equation
	1928 Quantum Tunneling
	1929 Hubble’s Law of Cosmic Expansion
	1929 Cyclotron
	1931 White Dwarfs and Chandrasekhar Limit
	1931 Jacob’s Ladder
	1932 Neutron
	1932 Antimatter
	1933 Dark Matter
	1933 Neutron Stars
	1934 Cherenkov Radiation
	1934 Sonoluminescence
	1935 EPR Paradox
	1935 Schrödinger’s Cat
	1937 Superfuids
	1938 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
	1942 Energy from the Nucleus
	1943 Silly Putty
	1945 Drinking Bird
	1945 Little Boy Atomic Bomb
	1946 Stellar Nucleosynthesis
	1947 Transistor
	1947 Sonic Booms
	1947 Hologram
	1948 Quantum Electrodynamics
	1948 Tensegrity
	1948 Casimir Effect
	1949 Time Travel
	1949 Radiocarbon Dating
	1950 Fermi Paradox
	1954 Solar Cells
	1955 Leaning Tower of Lire
	1955 Seeing the Single Atom
	1955 Atomic Clocks
	1956 Parallel Universes
	1956 Neutrinos
	1956 Tokamak
	1958 Integrated Circuit
	1959 Dark Side of the Moon
	1960 Dyson Sphere
	1960 Laser
	1960 Terminal Velocity
	1961 Anthropic Principle
	1961 Standard Model
	1962 Electromagnetic Pulse
	1963 Chaos Theory
	1963 Quasars
	1963 Lava Lamp
	1964 The God Particle
	1964 Quarks
	1964 CP Violation
	1964 Bell’s Theorem
	1965 Super Ball
	1965 Cosmic Microwave Background
	1967 Gamma-Ray Bursts
	1967 Living in a Simulation
	1967 Tachyons
	1967 Newton’s Cradle
	1967 Metamaterials
	1969 Unilluminable Rooms
	1971 Supersymmetry
	1980 Cosmic Infation
	1981 Quantum Computers
	1982 Quasicrystals
	1984 Theory of Everything
	1985 Buckyballs
	1987 Quantum Immortality
	1987 Self-Organized Criticality
	1988 Wormhole Time Machine
	1990 Hubble Telescope
	1992 Chronology Protection Conjecture
	1993 Quantum Teleportation
	1993 Stephen Hawking on Star Trek
	1995 Bose-Einstein Condensate
	1998 Dark Energy
	1999 Randall-Sundrum Branes
	1999 Fastest Tornado Speed
	2007 HAARP
	2008 Blackest Black
	2009 Large Hadron Collider
CLOSING THE CURTAIN
	36 Billion Cosmological Big Rip
	100 Billion Cosmic Isolation
	100 Trillion Universe Fades
	>100 Trillion Quantum Resurrection
Notes and Further Reading
Index
Photo Credits
About the Author